


Oak of Memories

by InjaMorgan



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bilbo is a sad little hobbit with a garden and a green thumb, BotFA spoilers - Freeform, M/M, a certain Acorn becomes important, post-BotFA, sorry no fix-it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InjaMorgan/pseuds/InjaMorgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>BotfA spoilers! BEWARE!</b>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bilbo returns to his life in the shire, but he brings something with him, something that will always remind him of the adventure he had, of the dwarf he called "friend"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oak of Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. That bloody acorn. I saw some lovely fanart of Bilbo with it as a sapling already ([Here](http://kvelur.tumblr.com/post/105037441929/its-growing-beautifully-thorin) or [Here](http://radiorcrist.tumblr.com/post/105244652711/i-think-youre-ready-to-face-the-world-little), for example), and this story grew out of it.
> 
> There is a short mention of stone-sense too, which is kindly borrowed from Thorinsmut's awesome story [Touch](http://archiveofourown.org/works/903889/chapters/1748319). Go read it if you're finished with this :D

After two weeks of travelling across half of the Shire, Bilbo was pretty sure that he had most of his furniture back. There was still an empty spot in his dining room (although he wasn't so sure anymore if there even had been a shelf there before he left), but at least he'd gotten all of his book back, and most of his silver spoons.

It was time for him to settle back into his old life. He should have sat down with a cup of tea, a few biscuits and his new pipe, leaning back and blowing smoke rings that the warm summer wind would carry off across Hobbiton.

Instead, he made a little hole in his vegetable bed, and planted an acorn, carefully shovelling earth over it.

He had found it again when he shook out his clothes on that first night back in Bag End, surprised that it had survived the battle and all the peril unscathed. The acorn had fallen to the ground, almost rolling under his bed (one of the few things that nobody had dared to carry off, as it was simply too heavy), and when he picked it up, all the tears that he had shed over the cooling body of a dead dwarf king returned, and he had bawled his eyes out, sitting in the very same spot where he had listened to the dwarves' song about their lost home for the first time.

Bilbo had clasped the acorn so tight that it left an impression in his hand. The next day, when the sun rose after a sleepless night, he still snivelled and was in dire need of a fresh handkerchief, but he had made a decision.

Around the tiny mound of earth, he put up a fence of thin metal wires, just in case some deer or rabbit thought that an oak sapling would be a tasty snack. In an afterthought, he went back into his smial and dug up his mother's jewellery box, taking out a tiny crystal that Belladonna Took had once brought home from one of her journeys. About the size of his little finger, it had the colour of the sun when it sets on a clear November day. Bilbo held it up and watched the light play inside it, noticing how the whole room filled with the warm glow of a dying sun.

It' was perfect.

He planted the crystal too, right next to the acorn, and then he waited.

* * *

One fine warm summer afternoon – the sapling had its first leaves (one a little larger than the other three) – Bilbo heard a knock on his door. He put down the book he was reading, and even though it should be impossible, he simply knew who is waiting on his doorstep.

“I told you that you don't have to knock,” he scolded them, but only meant it half-heartedly. Bofur grinned from one ear to the other as he hugs him, just like Nori. Dwalin almost crushed Bilbo when he embraced him, and Bifur bowed deeply before stepping closer, leaning the unharmed part of his forehead against Bilbo's and murmuring something in Khuzdul.

He had to fight hard to not cry then and there, and just about managed to invite them into Bag End, like a good host should.

They spent tea time and dinner talking about all the things that happened in the past year and a half: How Dáin had managed to rebuild Erebor so that dwarven life thrived once more, and how the dwarves even have some constant emissaries from Mirkwood staying in their halls. The relationship with the elves was still rocky, but they would manage. Bard however, now officially Lord of Dale, was always welcome in the mountain, as his people were once more tilling the land between the human and the dwarven city, and hence an important trade partner, if not necessarily the only one. Actually, they had made commercial agreements with many cities all over Middle-earth, and the forges were ringing with the sound of dwarven hammers.

In contrast to this, Bilbo's life in the Shire sounded rather boring. In spring, he had planted a new strain of tomatoes in his garden, one that would hopefully once again win him some prizes, and the courgettes were coming along nicely. He had traded a good many of his early tomatoes for cherries as the blossoms on his tree had been destroyed by a hailstorm, and on that day he also acquired a book about dwarvish history on the market, what a coincidence.

This threw the group into a lengthy discussion about certain mistakes that they found in the book, and Bilbo had to promise to write footnotes on every passage that wasn't accurate enough. By then, it was already dark outside and all of them agreed that they would talk some more in the morning. They all helped Bilbo with putting fresh linen on the beds of his two guest rooms, and the hobbit didn't even think to ask why it was so obvious that Dwalin and Nori share the single queen-sized bed in the smaller room and Bofur and Bifur retired to their separate beds in the other bedroom. 

Bilbo was just a tad bit annoyed by the quiet creaking and the hushed moans that he later heard through the thin walls of his smial, but just because it made him remember other nights where he had tried to fall asleep through the obvious sounds of mating dwarves in their camp. Bilbo was sure that whoever came up with the comparison of Hobbits and rabbits had never been in the company of thirteen horny, middle-aged dwarves before, and realised that they shag more than all of Tuckborough together.

That thought made Bilbo smile, and he quickly fell into a dreamless sleep, only to be woken by the first rays of sunshine tickling his nose. Before the quest, Bilbo had often slept late, only getting up for Second Breakfast or even Elevensies. Not even as a child he had been an early riser, enjoying the quiet time of the night more, and loved to read his books by candlelight rather than sunlight.

The six months with the dwarves had changed him, though. Sometimes he woke even before dawn, and on rare occasions still thinking he was in Beorn's home, or Thranduil's halls, or that it was after that one night in Erebor when …

No. He wouldn't allow himself to think about that night, Bilbo chided himself as he slipped into his dressing gown and padded across his room to throw some water into his face. He didn't need to cry so early in the day.

Instead, he went into his kitchen, made a fire in the hearth and pumped water into the kettle. He'd have only some light things for first breakfast, maybe just a cup of tea and a sandwich with cold cuts, as he expected that the dwarves would rise a little later, as they surely needed the sleep after the long journey. He put the full kettle above the fire, and then strolled through Bag End, listening to the snores of the four dwarves, and then walked out through the back door into his little kitchen garden.

Now, in the hotter summer months, Bilbo always tried to water his plants before the sun reached its zenith, and once again when it had cooled down a little in the evening. Over the commotion yesterday, he'd actually forgotten to do his evening round, and felt a little guilty for leaving his tomatoes thirsty … and the other little plant next to them that seemed to be taller every day.

Filling his watering can from the cistern hidden in a corner of the garden, Bilbo carefully watered all plants, and then stopped when he reached the young oak, crouching down next to it.

“Hello Thorin.”

Bilbo didn't know when he had started talking to the little tree, probably when he had discovered the first shoot digging its way out of the dark soil. He had been so proud of the plant, cooing over it like one would normally with a babe. But how that had developed into talking to it like it was a certain dead dwarf king, Bilbo couldn't remember.

Maybe the other hobbits were true after all, and Bilbo had indeed turned mad. Which, to be honest, Bilbo could not care less about.

Talking helped.

“You might have already noticed it, but we have guests,” Bilbo said, while checking the earth around the sapling for any kinds of bugs that could damage it. “Dwalin, Nori, Bofur and Bifur. They will probably stay here for a few days and then travel onwards to Ered Luin, to see how things are there.” The fence around the tree seemed to be in order, although Bilbo knew that he would have to make it a bit higher soon. “They told me all about Erebor, how beautiful the city has become. Golden light in those halls once more, I can hardly imagine! It was always so dark when we were there...”

He paused when he heard heavy footsteps on the grass. The dwarves never believed him when he said that he had better ears than them, and that they trampled across the lands like oliphaunts, but this time, one of them had actually managed to sneak up to him.

“You probably think I've gone nuts.” Bilbo turned around to look up into Dwalin's unreadable face. “But it's nice to have someone to talk to, you know.”

The dwarf stared at Bilbo for a long time, then gazing at the little oak for a bit, and then back to the hobbit. Bilbo wondered how much Dwalin had heard, if he had realised to whom he was actually talking when sitting in his vegetable patch, and feared that he would get some snide remark about the silliness of hobbits and their plants. There seemed to be a lot to be going on behind the thick skull of Dwalin's, and as a sudden, small smile fluttered across the dwarf's lips, Bilbo realised he had held his breath the whole time.

And then, Dwalin knelt down next to Bilbo, still smiling. His fingers touched the little leaves in a gesture that seemed far too tender for such a big dwarf, and when he spoke it was almost too quiet for Bilbo to catch.

“Long time no see, cousin.”

* * *

Bilbo shouldn't have been surprised to find the other dwarves also awake as soon as him and Dwalin returned into Bag End, and over breakfast he told all of them the story about the significance of the tree sapling in his tomato patch. Bilbo felt silly the whole time, still waiting for some negative comment, but all he got was warm smiles, and Bifur who gesticulated at his cousin and repeated something in Khuzdul over and over again. In the end, Nori as well as Bofur and Bifur wanted to see the oak, and as they cam to stand around it, Bilbo had finally lost some of his nervousness.

“It's still young, but it will grow so big that even you won't be able to encompass it's trunk, Dwalin,” Bilbo said, earning another grin from the dwarf.

“But that will take a lifetime,” he replied.

“Or two,” agreed Nori.

“But Bilbo will care well for it, won't you?” Bofur asked, while his cousin had crouched down, digging his fingers into the earth and murmuring to himself.

“Of course I will. Sunshine, water, a tad of fertilizer, trees don't need that much.”

“ _'ala galikh kâmin!_ ” Bifur suddenly exclaimed, turning to Bilbo. “ _Hu zazunuda du ablâkul zars._ ”

“He said that the soil is good for a tree,” Bofur readily translated the Khuzdul. “Sometimes I think Bifur can talk with the stones and the earth, like an extension of his stone-sense.”

Bilbo nodded, having experienced this unique talent of the dwarves first-hand. Some had complained about feeling ill in the Misty Mountains when they had gotten closer to the Stone Giants, and in Erebor it had been Nori who showed them where to step safely in the partially crumbled halls.

“And talking to it helps it grow, too?” Nori inquired, now inspecting the plant closely, too.

“Well, all hobbits know that plants grow faster when you treat them like friends, and some say that talking to a friend is the most essential part of a friendship.” Bilbo sighed. “And it's not that it can hurt when I talk to myself a few times a week.”

Bofur patted the hobbit's shoulder. “I think it's brilliant. What do you usually say when you're here?”

Bilbo hummed, trying to remember what he normally told the young oak. “I talk about what happened in the last few days. How much my dear cousin Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is annoying me, and how the children of the Gamgee's down in No 2 have managed to find a whole bag of delicious wild strawberries in the woods around Hobbiton. That kind of things.”

Dwalin harrumphed. “We could tell some stories too, I think.”

The other dwarves agreed, and Bofur was the first to recount the tale of how him and his miners had managed to repair the entrance to the Great Mines in only half of the time that Balin had estimated.

Bilbo stepped back as soon as he realised that Nori and Dwalin wanted to speak too, and occupied himself with inspecting the still green tomatoes on his plant. He really tried not to listen, but he caught a good chunk of Nori's story about how he and Dwalin had stopped an assassination attempt on King Dáin. It apparently included Nori climbing through Erebor's ventilation shafts, and Dwalin throwing an axe across a hall, accurately severing the assassin's head from the body.

The last one was Bifur, who talked for just a short time, and of course, in Khuzdul. The only thing that Bilbo understood were the names Bofur and Bombur, and strangely, Bilbo's own name. When Bifur was finished, he went to the hobbit who still knelt next to his tomatoes, and the dwarf's prompt to stand up was pretty clear. Then Bifur grasped Bilbo's hands, once again leaned their foreheads together and spoke.

“ _E gêldul ra binamnâth tada astu maralmên hu khiduyothur. Kalmêzi kasat zud burtul. Mukhuh bekhazu Mahal tamraki astu ra 'ala 'azghzarsith._ ”

Bilbo blinked, and the solemn tone of Bifur's words made him murmur a “Thank you” simply out of reflex, before he turned to Bofur.

“What did he say?”

The other dwarves seemed distressed, almost nervous, and Bilbo knew already that, whatever they might answer, it would be just part of the truth.

“He blessed you and your tree,” Bofur finally said, tugging at the corner of his hat. “It's quite a complicated thing to say in Khuzdul.”

Bilbo smiled.

It was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be a second part soon, I promise.
> 
> **  
> _Khuzdul translations:_  
> **  
>  **'ala galikh kâmin!** \- This is good earth!
> 
>  **Hu zamuha ablâkul zars.** \- It will make a mighty tree.
> 
>  **E gêldul ra binamnâth tada astu maralmên hu khiduyothur. Kalmêzi kasat zud burtul. Mukhuh bekhazu Mahal tamraki astu ra 'ala 'azghzarsith.** \- I'm happy and sad that you still love him. Your fate ought to be different. May Mahal's shield protect you and this little tree.


End file.
